Drill down just a few miles into the earth’s crust, and the temperature will rise substantially. This heat comes from three sources: emissions from radioactive minerals, the compressive force of gravity, and to a lesser extent, solar energy absorbed at the earth’s surface. Although such energy is not truly renewable (radioactive elements do eventually decay [...]
What an image!
The NASA space shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope, seen in silhouette during a solar transit at 12:17 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two space craft were at an altitude of 600 km above the earth. It took only 0.8 seconds for them to [...]
H1N1 strain of Influenza A
How close are we to Armageddon?
Is the eleventh Plague upon us?
Blood, Frogs, Gnats, Death to Livestock, Pestilence, Boils, Hail, Locusts, Darkness, Slaying of the Firstborn…and now H1N1 swine flu?
Is this the return of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 during which about 50 million people died?
Assess swine flu this way: according [...]
In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German economist and sociologist Max Weber theorized that capitalism’s ascendancy owed much to Protestantism’s emphasis on hard work and worldly success. Whether or not Weber was actually right, the term he coined, “Protestant ethic,” has, to many, become accepted as part of our [...]
You pays your money and you takes your chances, but the House always has an edge.
Did you ever wonder how big that edge is?
Among the simplest edges to compute is Las Vegas roulette. If your chips are on one of the numbers from 1 to 36, and you win, you get paid 35-1. That means [...]
Born 200 years ago, February 12, 1809: Charles Darwin, who changed the way we think about a human’s place in the bios, and Abraham Lincoln, who changed the way we think about a human’s place in society.
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But perhaps these two Great Men were not born on the same day. Darwin’s birth was [...]
“Are you N2 your tires?” asks Ingersoll Rand, marketers of Nitrogeneration™, a new way to inflate your tires…and Ingersoll Rand’s bottom line.
By filling your tires with pure nitrogen instead of air, Ingersoll Rand, one of the various nitrogen-into-tires purveyors, contends that you will: (1) enhance safety because pressure decreases more slowly, (2) lengthen tire life [...]
“Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!” —Philip Nolan in “The Man Without a Country” by Edward Everett Hale (short story, 1863)
Democrat Joe Lieberman, eight years ago, was denied the vice presidency by suspect Republican counting. Independent Joe Lieberman, two years ago, unwilling to accept rejection in [...]
Occasionally I read an essay so intelligent, so artfully crafted, that I pause at the end, marvel, and immediately read it again…aloud.
The following essay by Mark Danner was published in The New York Review of Books (issue date November 6, 2008) as part of a symposium on the upcoming election entitled “What’s at Stake.” On [...]
There is no conscience.
From tonight’s debate (transcript here):
McCAIN: Senator Obama has asked for nearly $1 billion in pork-barrel earmark projects, including $3 million for an overhead projector in a planetarium in his hometown.
Surely someone in his coterie knows
